I’ve been thinking lately about how an unconference style event for an association could work. I’ll be posting some ideas on that later on. I thought it would be good to start by comparing the characteristics of conferences and unconferences. So, in no particular or meaningful order, here is my initial list:
| Conference | Unconference |
| Attendees | Participants |
| Exhibitors | Participants |
| Recruiting speakers | Recruiting participants |
| Content planning | Content facilitation |
| Direct marketing | Word of mouth marketing |
| Handouts | Wikis |
| 12 month planning cycle | 12 week planning cycle |
| Sponsorships | Donations |
| Once a year | As often as needed and desired |
| Large budgets | Shoe-string budgets |
| Maximize value for organizers | Maximize value for participants |
| Best practices | Innovation |
| Top down | Bottom up |
| Wisdom of experts | Wisdom of crowds |
| Magazine coverage 2 months later | Live blogging/podcasting |
| Slides | Stories |
| Panels | Conversations |
| Best practices | Practicing |
| Hierarchy | Networks |
| Directive methods | participatory methods |
| Participants | Contributors/creators |
| Speakers | Conversation starters |
| Sharing information | Learning collaboratively |
| Instruction | Discovery |
| Best learning in the hallway | It’s all hallway! |
I’m sure a lot more can be added to this but it’s a start.
I also just created a Wikipedia entry for unconference. I was surprised it didn’t exist yet.
Update: Added a couple more items suggested by Rich Westerfield. (I changed Powerpoint to Slides.)
Update 2: Added several more contributed in the comments by Nancy White and Jeff De Cagna. Thanks Nancy and Jeff!
C. David Gammel, CAE 
Here are a few more:
Best practices / PRACTICING
hierarchy/networks
directive methods/participatory methods (i.e. Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, games, etc.)
A few more:
Participants/contributors or creators
Speakers/conversation starters
Product/authentic experience
Sharing information/learning collaboratively
One interesting idea/An limitless number of compelling insights
Instruction/discovery
Everyone in the same physical place/anyone, anywhere and in their own ways
“Best learning takes place in the hallways”/It’s all the hallway
Let’s keep adding!
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David,
I just love this idea. Giving the format a name – brings it to life. I have been running conferences and facilitating knowledge cafes for the past two years or more with many of these principals in mind.
Your posting inspires me to further develop the concept and encourage traditional conference organizers to change their ways – though this won’t be easy 🙂
Regards
David Gurteen
Love this. I’m reading “World Cafe – Furthering the Future by Having Conversations that Matter” – very similiar concepts. Co-activity brought to life.
Another one:
Experts/Passionate Users
Personal/Universal
Agenda/Purposeful Flow
Delightfully,
Laura
You know, I had my first world cafe experience last December and really got a lot out of it. As I’ve been thinking about unconferences, I see using a world cafe session as part of the kick off could be crucial to warming everyone up and getting the ideas flowing for identifying the content and who will be doing what during the rest of the meeting.
And what a great wrap – discussion of the concepts rising of importance for each person and then culling the collective wisdom…
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Great comparison. Infact even the whole Web2.0 concepts are very similar to the underlying fundamental principles of unconferences.
we can even say that unconferences are the web2.0 version of conferences
here is a list of similarities between web2.0 & unconferences
http://shahnawazkhan.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/whats-similar-between-the-concepts-and-principles-behind-web20-and-unconferences/
heres some more:
Exact time to start/Whenever you think..that is the right time to start.
Schedule/List of talks
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